Sunday 6 May 2012 14.35 EDT
First published on Sunday 6 May 2012 14.35 EDT

Five years ago, Franco-British export manager Yves Parent voted for the French presidential candidate who promised a "rupture" with the past that would change his home country for the better. Today, as he stood outside the polling station at the Collège Français Bilingue in Kentish Town, Parent was adamant that he would not be doing the same thing again. "I'm disappointed by what [Nicolas] Sarkozy's done," he said. "I voted for [François] Hollande but not with conviction."

Like many of the expatriates who, armed with takeaway coffees and a fierce sense of republican duty, descended on this usually tranquil corner of north London to vote in the presidential runoff on the other side of the Channel, Parent said he felt distinctly uninspired by this year's candidates.

Has the man he voted for got what it takes? "No," said Parent, shrugging. "We had two choices: vote Hollande or do a blank vote. Marine le Pen said we should do a blank vote and I'm not going to do anything she says. So it's more a vote of last resort."

He was not alone in the sentiment. As queues formed outside the polling station – one of three in London and 10 nationwide for the roughly 80,000 registered French voters in the UK – one man who, gave his name as Mr Visciano, refused to say for whom he had voted but said neither candidate had appealed. "Sarkozy: everyone knows who he is and what he does. Hollande: he was the second choice of the Socialist party and he led a ridiculous campaign," he said. One woman, who did not want to give her name, seemed to sum up the feelings of many. "In fact, we have not voted for Hollande," she said. "We've voted against Sarkozy."

Why such opprobrium for a man who, when he visited France's so-called "fifth city" in 2007, was greeted with rapturous applause? Carine, a Eurostar employee, said she had voted Hollande because the president's politics were "too repressive". Quentin Liger, a committed leftwing voter, singled out Sarkozy's stance on immigration.

Parent, who has lived in Britain for 20 years, said that while he supported Sarkozy's economic strategy he could not back his social policies, or his reaching out to the Front National vote.

At Kentish Town, where the Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger and former Arsenal player Robert Pires both turned out to vote in the morning, those who were admitting to having voted for Sarkozy were few and far between. But Serge, 39, from Cambridge, said he had chosen him for "logical" reasons. For him, Sarkozy had been impressive on the world stage. Hollande, he said, would have to prove himself.

Noëlle, however, a French teacher, at the Institut francais in South Kensington, west London, said she had no truck with those who criticised Hollande's lack of experience and profile. "He's been in politics for 30 years. He did his training with Mitterrand," she said. "Monsieur Bling Bling has been a catastrophe for France." A supporter of the left all her life, she was unable to vote for France's last Socialist president in 1981 because she was in Mexico. "So now," she said, "it feels good."